The fiction and fantasy of Chad Anctil

Archive for November, 2015

I’m not sure I can really write this properly – it’s all in my head, the thoughts and ideas coming fast and spinning wildly – but I have an understanding that I never really had before, concepts of divinity and spirituality and religion that I never really considered before yesterday. I’ll try to start at the beginning, if there is a beginning for a thing like this.

I’ve been very upset and dismayed lately related to the attacks in France and Beirut and so many people’s reactions of fear and ignorance and hatred. Seeing elected officials, even candidates for president saying they want to stop refugees from coming to america, or only letting the Christian refugees in, or registering and monitoring the Muslims… It’s all driven not only by fear, but by ‘religion’; this group thinks God wants them to kill that group; this other group must discriminate against those guys because an old book ‘maybe’ tells them to by one interpretation; this group says that this plot of land was given to them by God and so they must kill everyone who believes otherwise, and somehow all these groups have complex reasons why all these religious texts that say ‘love one another’ don’t apply to EVERYONE, just the people that look / behave / believe the same thing they do… It’s upsetting, and it’s destroying the world. That was my first big epiphany… religions that, objectively, are supposed to lift people up and help the needy and their communities, help bring people together, have somehow gotten to the point where they are literally destroying the world. Religion is being used to tear apart countries, destroy communities, ignore planetary destruction like climate change, and so much more. So that was my first true eye opening epiphany, and it happened while I was driving to the grocery store.